“Beautiful creature!” replied he.
“Won’t you send your plate over for some of it?”
“With all my heart,” sighed he, looking most languishingly in the direction of the turkey.
“Why, Mr Morton,” said Hardy, “you said before dinner that you had an excellent appetite; you are not giving proof of it now—I am afraid you are not well.”
Morton coloured to the eyes, and gave a faint laugh. The fact was, that he was not well; he had just been seized with a violent attack of a rather uncommon complaint, called “love at first sight.” He felt confused, he scarcely knew why, and he fancied everybody was noticing his confusion, which made him ten times worse. He laughed when he ought to have looked grave, and looked grave when he ought to have laughed, and was guilty of a thousand awkwardnesses, which attracted towards him the observation he wished to avoid. He strove manfully to look up the table, and down the table, and in every direction but that in which he wished to look; but his eyes would, somehow or another, have their own way in spite of him, and always contrived, at last, as naturally as possible, to direct their glances towards the neighbourhood of the turkey. It was with a feeling of positive relief he saw the ladies retire from the table; and no sooner were they gone than he became a rational man again, though rather more abstracted and silent than he had been before dinner.
“That was rather a nice-looking girl sitting opposite to me at dinner,” remarked he, hesitatingly and inquiringly, to his friend Hardy, after they rose from table. “Do you know who she is?”
“I have heard her name, but I forget it just now,” said the sailor; “but she is a devilish fine woman; I wonder the captain did not introduce you to her.”
“Why, so he did; but he spoke so indistinctly that I could not catch the name.”
At one bell in the second dog-watch (half-past six), the band made their appearance on deck; and no sooner were the lively strains of the music heard, than the ship’s company, always ready for “a lark,” came swarming up the hatchways, and the decks soon resounded with the sounds of the “fantastic,” but anything but “light” toe.
“Come, gentlemen,” said Captain Dickens to his passengers, “won’t you follow the good example the men are setting you? Can’t you persuade the ladies to dance? Mr Morton, here is a fair lady for you to try your powers of persuasion upon,” looking at one who was walking beside him, and who made a movement of assent in reply to Morton’s bow.